I am mounting my DA 50 to my Extra 300LX. What's the best way to get the engine centered in the cowl. I know on the 540 Edge the cut out for the engine made it real easy. This plane has that "big grin" opening and I don't want to muck it up.

I thought about measuring side to side in the opening and center the engine in the opening but it just doesn't look right that way.

Also where does the top of the spinner back plate line up in relation to the cowl top?

I don't know if it's right or not, but I made the the top of the spinner backplate flush with the top of the cowl. It looked like the crank was centered in the vertical plane doing it like that. I used the cutouts in my Pete's spinner backplate as references for the side-side centering. IE, equal amounts of cowl showing in each cutout. Hopefully that makes sense, kinda hard to explain.

Camera angles aren't quite right but maybe this helps. Engine offset was about 5/16".

Yea, that's just about what I have ended up with. But I am having one of those moments where I want to be dead sure before I drill and mount. Measure twice cut once kinda thing

What jhord did is correct.

TF

Tom,

This is one area in the manual that could be redone showing an Extra 300 cowl instead of the 540 cowl that you have in there. Since I have done the mount on the 540 and the ultimate before those are so easy because the cowl has the circle on them to ine everything up.